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Made this last night when I decided against cleaning in favour of sitting in bed, reading some magazines I’ve had kicking around for too long, and watching episode 2 of The Fall. I loves me some British TV!

I was really impressed with this. I found it pretty much screamed maple and almond, and though I wasn’t quite getting “waffle”, there was definitely something bready about it. I have to remember to resteep it tonight before I forget what the used leaves in my steeper sitting on the counter are and accidentally throw them out :)

Another one of Butiki’s amazing finale teas that I am happy I ordered!

Yum. I had this for the first time the other night and really liked it.

It’s the kind of black tea I want to keep stocked.

More later!

Tried this one again last night, hoping to nail it down a bit more.
I just poured the entire sample bag into my steeper, and left it for 2 min. This made a potent cup, I figured no way would it not slap me in the face this time! All or nothing!

So I drank it, and tried to really figure it out.

It reminded me if the smokey aspect of Queen Catherine, except something about this one was more pleasing to me, it seemed brighter, a bit fruitier or fresher somehow, and the smoke was only a hint. I didn’t hate it, but I still think I preferred the Mao Feng.

Interesting tea, just sorry I couldn’t describe it better! Thanks Angel!

Holy sweet mother of dragons this is delicious!

SUCH a rich, thick, silky smooth mouth feel. So chocolatey. Yum.

I am pretty sure I like this, but I accidentally messed up my cup because I decided to add some sugar to it and I had a stevia packet at my desk that I stole brought back from Disney World…anyway I’ve never really had Stevia but I thought it would be less artificial tasting. Dude, that is NOT sugar.

So future me will add sugar to my next cup of this.

First impressions though, I thought it was a great blend of flavours. The earthy base somehow brought to mind like a graham crust, weird. Went really well with the chocolate, mint and cheesecake.

Will enjoy the last few cups in my bag for sure!

huh.

I bought a small tin of this on a whim after Christmas because it was like $3.00. I figured worst case scenario it would be a good strong tea to have at work in the mornings with milk. It is, bold, strong… but not overly GOOD.

I think I may have become a bit of a tea snob, somehow, without actually really knowing what I’m talking about most of the time as far as tea is concerned.

But I’ve been so spoiled by Assams from Butiki and A&D and other companies, that something like this falls short of the mark, for me.

I first notice how broken up the leaves are. After drinking Butiki and WP lately, I’ve become accustomed to seeing long, lusciously unbroken leaves. Not this. And not to say that broken up tiny tea leaves can’t be good, i mean check out Crimson Horizon, i love that one! But this just tastes like if you were to open up a crappy generic black tea bag from a hotel lobby or something and dump it in your cup.

Is it gross? No! Just bitter, way too bitter for me. SLIGHTLY raisiny. I will definitely drink it all, with my usually sploosh of 10% cream, and I don’t feel like I wasted my $3 considering how much I got. And a reusable tin as well! But I won’t mourn it when it’s gone, and it’s going to be a generic black tea space filler when I just want to make something strong and bold, quick and easy without fussing around at work.

Overall, I would rate this tea a big, fat “MEH.”

Signed – The Uneducated Tea Snob

I guess I reviewed this before and didn’t have much luck.

I am grateful that Angel sent over more samples of this for me to try, because according to everyone else’s tasting notes, I should definitely give it another go.

I need to try it again to really form a proper opinion, I still feel so ignorant compared to everyone else. “wheat toast with honey, cocoa notes with a campfire in the distance…”… yeah. I don’t get that.

All I could really compare this to was the Mao Feng Keemun, which I really liked. I found this one to be much less sweet, and I didn’t get any cocoa notes, personally. But I think my bar for cocoa notes in straight black tea has been raised up to the Verdant Laoshan Black level, and so anything less is hard for me to discern. (I used that word twice today, WOTD!)

First impression, a tiny bit of smoke, slightly bitter…. mineral?? I don’t even know what that means. I wish there was a tea school near me so I could learn to train my tongue. But I guess that would just entail someone telling me what I’m supposed to taste, me nodding with a blank face while getting really mad that I still just taste straight tea. What’s in this cup?? TEA. Also in that cup. Still tea, guys.

I can note a difference between different types of tea (like, darjeeling vs. assam vs pu-erh vs oolong, for example), and when there’s a painfully obvious flavour profile, I’m all over that (LB, or a tea with vanilla beans cut in – G.O.)… but LAWDY do I ever have troubles catching specific notes in a tea like this one.

I am truly envious of all you “whole grain toast with honey slathered on top and a mug of hot cocoa in front of a campfire” people!!!

But that being said, I know I’ve come a LONG way. And I always know when I love a tea, I just can’t always verbalize WHY. Someday, tongue. You and the brain will be on the same page.

I will try this one later, I would like to write a better review for Teavivre!

I was pretty excited to try this, but ultimately I think it’s another strawberry tea that I have issues with. Only because I find most often, anything strawberry flavoured tastes… like added flavour, not natural. A bit overwhelming.

I was hoping for more cheesecake for sure! And maybe more rhubarb, but I very likely just had trouble discerning the rhubarb element of this tea.

The pu-erh was definitely earthy, even though I rinsed it. Not BAD, it added a good backbone to the tea.

Happy to have tried it, but likely one I will pass on to someone who truly enjoyed it :)

I’ve had this one a couple times now, most recently being last night as we sat down to watch a movie. My husband decided to put on Dumb and Dumberer which was a plan i was NOT super keen on, I didn’t LOVE the first one and i am not a big fan of stupid idiot comedies.

I know this isn’t a movie review site, but I feel compelled to tell you that I laughed out loud a lot of times and so I can’t really hate on it like I thought I would. It was stupid funny.

The tea, however…. definitely tasty. I guess the spectrum of all my reviews is pretty much like “hey, this was enjoyable” or “yucky, so bad that I dumped it out”… with a bit of “meh” in between.

This one definitely falls under the “enjoyable” category. I’m a pretty big advocate of the ‘Not So Vanilla’ tea, which, with the addition of mint, became this tea.

I think if (when, really) I were to repurchase from Tippy’s Tea, I am likely to just buy twice as much Not So Vanilla and skip this one.

While it was good, I love vanilla so much that I don’t want anything (mint, for example) to overshadow it.

I liked how it’s not an artificial “chocolatey” mint tea, because whatever cocoa notes exist would come from the golden monkey tea.

(I wouldn’t complain if it was a bit more chocolatey though…the tea base I mean. I wonder if anyone’s ever mixed Laoshan Black with mint leaves??)

Soooooooooooooo, good tea, definitely worth trying.

I remain a superfan of the “Not So Vanilla” though.

Sipdown!

I really liked this tea while I had it. It was just kicking around in my stash for so long that I decided the other day to just dump what was left in my steeping basket and make a super potent cup of tea, just to get rid of the rest. So it was like 3-4 tsp of leaves for one 12 oz cup. I only let it steep 2 min because I didn’t want to get all crazy.

It actually was a nice, flavourful cup. I would totally recommend it. Creamy, fresh, light, really nice. Definitely OOLONGY. I was just done with it. And now I have another tin to use for one of my Butiki teas……. hmmmmmmmmmmmm….